One Fall

By Caroliena Cabada

1965, California

When Marikit married Gil, the only demand he made of her was to let him keep going to the dance halls on his own.

“I’m just meeting with the other men,” he said, “to relax. You understand.”

Marikit waved her hand and said, “That’s fine. I don’t like the halls anyway.” The cigarette smoke made her eyes burn and water, and the band only played songs that moved fast, never the slow, sweet songs her father would play for her mother.

And anyway, Gil was a good man. He always came home first when he received his pay, gave Marikit enough money for food and clothing for the family, ate dinner at home, and had his first drink of rice wine with them before he went to the hall. This way, he saved money and spent time with his four children, all growing much faster than either of them could have imagined possible. At the door of their home, Marikit kissed him goodbye for the night, then took care of the house. Her oldest, Honesto, corralled the younger ones into doing chores, and Marikit sang the same five songs under her breath as she swept the kitchen floor and front porch.

The children had gone to bed when she heard the sound of heavy footfall at the front door. Peeking out the window curtains, Marikit saw her husband wearing a black eye and bloody nose as he leaned into another man who practically carried him home.

Marikit opened the door before they could knock and stood aside to let them in. “What happened?” she whispered, praying the children were fast asleep. The man helped Gil into his chair while she entered the kitchen. She ran water and searched for a clean washcloth.

“Police raid,” the man said, his voice low in pitch and volume. His hat tipped crookedly on his head and he took the damp cloth from Marikit as she passed it through the cutout that connected the kitchen and dining area. “Gil here got a baton to the face, then fell while the crowd was running. We just barely escaped.”

“The police?” Marikit yelped. “Why would they—”

“I recommend you don’t ask questions,” the man said. “The less you know, the better.”

Marikit squared her shoulders and looked at the man with her eyes narrowed. “And who are you to tell me what I can and cannot ask?”

“Please, just listen to him, Kit,” Gil said, his words muffled underneath the stained washcloth held to his nose. “I’ll tell you later—promise—but it’s been a long night.”

Marikit turned her glare to her husband, but pressed her lips into a tight line. “Fine. Later.” She turned back to the man and said through gritted teeth, “Do you want something to eat? What’s your name?”

“Arnel Pintado,” the man said. He finally removed his hat, revealing slick brown hair cropped close around his ears. “And no, I shouldn’t overstay my welcome.”

“Nonsense,” Marikit said, her words tight. “It’ll only be pan de sal and milk coffee. You can take some home for your wife, for her breakfast tomorrow.”

“Oh, I’m not married.” Arnel fidgeted with the ribbon around his hat brim, and Marikit saw that his fingers were callused and dry at the webbing, but absent of a wedding band. “But, I should go.”

“Stay,” Gil said, dabbing gently at his nose as the blood finally stopped. “Please. I insist. Let us at least give you some food.”

Marikit took the cloth from her husband with a shaking hand, relieved to see at least one thing improve about his condition. She retreated to the kitchen to reheat the bread and put on a pot of coffee.

“Well,” Arnel said as he sat at the small dining table, on the edge of the chair like he was two seconds away from flight, “Salamat, Gil. Maraming salamat, Kit.”

“Only my husband calls me Kit,” Marikit said, pouring milk into a pan to scald. “To everyone else, it’s Marikit.”

The low sound of the men’s chuckles calmed her trembling.

#

That night, Marikit dozed lightly, her head on Gil’s chest, still basking in the afterglow of making love. Sex had been quiet and gentle, with Marikit moving in ways that avoided the worst of her husband’s bruises. Gil stroked back her dark hair and breathed deep, his heart still racing under Marikit’s ear. When he spoke, he was so quiet that Marikit replied with, “What was that?”

“I said that something’s going to happen soon.” Gil threaded his fingers in Marikit’s hair and pulled her head back gently to get her to look at him. “There’s this guy coming up to the valley, and it looks like people are actually interested in what he has to say.” He released his hold on her and resumed his gentle stroking. “You know that I do my best by you, yes?”

“Of course,” Marikit breathed, searching Gil’s eyes in the dim light.

“And above all else, I put you first.”

Marikit moved to prop herself onto an elbow, her hand on Gil’s chest. “What is it? What’s happening?”

Gil took his wife’s hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, the hair of his mustache brushing against the joints. “I need you to start saving a little bit more. Money, and food.”

“What is—?” Marikit stopped at the sight of her husband’s face, the gloss of tears in his eyes that threatened to, but did not, fall down his cheeks. Instead, of speaking, she nodded then dipped her head to kiss him, gently, tasting blood where a cut on his lip had reopened.

#

The next day, Gil worked, then came home wincing every other step. Arnel came with him, watching his friend’s movements but keeping his hands in his pockets, feigning nonchalance as he spoke at a steady pace. The day was hot, the men’s shirts had patches soaked through at the neck and armpits, sweat running rivulets through the dust and dirt on their cheeks and chins.

Gil’s face was especially dirty, and the splotchy purple of his healing eye was hidden beneath the grime. Arnel helped him sit down on the porch stair when the man paused and grunted in pain as he tried to bend at the waist. They both looked up when Marikit opened the door. “What do you need?” she asked, her brusque words threaded with anguished affection.

“Washcloth,” Gil grunted, leaning forward to untie his boots.

“New shirt?”

“No,” Gil said. “Staying home tonight.”

Marikit nodded, and sent a prayer up to God thanking him for her husband’s decision to stay in instead of going out to the dance hall again. She ran a cloth under the tap then rushed it out to Gil, dripping water on the floor. She addressed the other man without looking at him. “Thank you for bringing my husband home again.”

“Set a place for him at the table,” Gil said, easing his boots off. “He’s staying for dinner.”

“Gil, I couldn’t—”

“I insist,” Gil said. He gripped the porch railing and pulled himself up. The wooden beams creaked but held steady. “You’re a good man. You deserve good food. And my wife,” he gestured toward Marikit who was still standing in the doorway, “makes excellent food.” He stepped through the door and paused to kiss his wife on the lips before entering their home.

Arnel looked up and met Marikit’s eye. He raised his hand to his hat as if to remove it, but faltered, a blush darkening his cheeks. Marikit kept her face still, observing how different the man seemed in the fading daylight, shy at golden hour when he was bold just the night before. She had found herself grown to like him during the short sojourn at her dining table, despite the easy way he claimed authority in her space. He laughed with Gil, teased him the way she teased him when he got too serious, and kept his chuckles whisper-soft behind his teeth so as to not wake the children. It was clear that he knew Gil well, and clear that Gil trusted him, too, and so over the course of the night trading pleasantries and light gossip, it was like Arnel had always been there, in that chair, at that hour of the night. But on the porch alone with her with the sun still up but rapidly falling, he shifted on his feet as if he was caught between coming and going. Arnel opened his mouth, but Marikit spoke before he could say a word.

“My husband exaggerates,” she said, stepping aside from the doorway. “It’ll be a simple meal, but you’re welcome at our table.”

Arnel removed his hat, his eyes a little wide. “Salamat po, Marikit.”

#

The table was crowded, but only a little more so than usual. Marikit sat at Gil’s right hand, and Iris was to her right. Young Gregor and Richie shared a seat at the foot of the table, two weedy boys who were just beginning their grown spurts, to give Arnel the chair next to Honesto, who sat at his father’s left hand. Honesto was almost of a height with the grown men when he sat up straight. He adopted Gil’s solemn expression as he ate, his patchy mustache carefully combed into a shape that imitated his father’s thick, graying facial hair.

Arnel kept his face clean-shaven, though a shadow of stubble covered a pointed chin. His face seemed even younger that way, younger than the five years that separated him and Gil, a fact that he reminded the other man.

“You’re younger than me,” he teased as he scooped rice onto his spoon. “You should lighten up. Live a little.”

“Or you should buckle down,” Gil replied. “The pickers are looking to you—”

“And they see me having a grand old time,” Arnel said, shrugging, “and still saying we should fight. It works. Charisma. Friendliness. Show the people something good, and tell them that it can be even better.”

“We’re trying to organize them, not seduce them.”

“Who said anything about seduction? Listen—” Arnel turned his attention to Honesto, who sat, if possible, even straighter. “You’re a man now. You ever try to woo a lady?”

“That’s not appropriate dinner conversation with ladies present.” Marikit reached over to scoop rice onto her husband’s emptied plate. “What is this talk about the pickers anyway?”

Arnel and Gil looked at each other before Arnel said, “Nothing. Just some worker motivation.” He waved his spoon in a vague circle, then took another bite of food. “This tastes wonderful, by the way. Your husband is the one who’s right, here.”

Marikit hummed her thanks, but her eyes watched Arnel’s easy movements.

#

In the weeks that followed, Marikit ran the house on a tighter budget. She patched and altered her old clothes so that Iris could wear Marikit’s dresses and skirts. In the kitchen, she washed and dried an empty coffee tin and measured out half a cup of rice to set aside every time she cooked a meal. She pickled every vegetable, dried beans in their pods, and extracted seeds from the tomatoes to grow them again in the shade of the house. Honesto haggled with the butcher to get bone and meat scraps for cheap, then salted the strips at the dinner table when his siblings went to bed.

Arnel became a regular occurrence at the dinner table, too. He brought fresh-squeezed orange juice with the seeds sunk to the bottom, and newspaper clippings to read with Gil and Honesto, who had taken to slicking his hair back like his father’s friend. Arnel seemed no more serious since Gil’s admonishment during that first dinner, but the jokes he made were more subdued, and he always helped clean up the meal when he did eat with them.

“Marikit, huh?” he said while drying the cleaned dishes she handed to him. “Meaning, ‘pretty.’ How do you spell that, though?”

Marikit’s stomach swooped, but she dipped the plate in her hands into the sink of water to rinse off the soap suds. “I don’t know.”

“Never got around to learning how to read the mother tongue?” Arnel smiled and took the plate.

Marikit hummed. “Never got a chance to learn to read anything.” She felt her face heat up. Her illiteracy, after all, wasn’t for a lack of trying. In her early courtship with Gil, he would read the newspaper with her, sounding out the words in a low, clear voice. But she stopped paying attention to the page and stared, instead, at his throat, the bob of his Adam’s apple, the sharp hinge of his jaw. In the end, she gave it up and contented herself to whatever words Gil was willing to speak.

Numbers she could make sense of and see in her mind as so many ounces and pounds of rice grains, could feel in her hands when she weighed one squash versus another at the grocery store. Words only came alive when spoken or sung.

“Really?” Arnel’s eyes grew wide. “But—”

“I can take care of the rest of this,” Marikit said, plunging her hands back into the sink. “Thank you for helping.”

Arnel opened his mouth. Marikit turned her shoulder.

#

In the summer, heat stayed in the valley, but the workers moved through the town. Honesto and Gregor were old enough to work with Gil and Arnel, moving with the crops, but not too far or for too long. When there wasn’t asparagus, there were grapes. When there weren’t grapes, there was construction. When there wasn’t construction, there was always war for the young men.

At some point, it was decided that Arnel would live with them, in a brief discussion that had Marikit curling her hands into fists and then letting them loose again. He tried to deny the offer at first, saying that he traveled light, could probably find a place to camp and be just fine, that his landlord would probably come begging for them all to come back when he can’t find any more tenants. But Gil offered, and Marikit insisted, and Arnel pitched a tent in the backyard most nights, slept inside on the couch when the rain made its way over the mountain. He played Gil’s guitar after dinner until the sun went down, which is when he would smoke a cigarette with the man and talk in low voices on the porch, looking up at the stars.

Marikit tried not to hear these conversations, but it was like her ears were pinned to their particular pitches. She heard them underneath the quiet din of cleaning the kitchen, and at points she couldn’t distinguish her husband’s voice from Arnel’s. And when that happened, she’d peek out the curtain, see the smoke rise from their lips and fingertips, and wait until she could see someone speak, re-tune her ear to Gil’s voice.

They talked into the night. Arnel, at points, seemed to be reassuring Gil of something, and Gil shook his head and said that no, it was still his responsibility. To join the workers. To add his body to the crowd and be counted. To demand dignity for himself.

To strike.

Marikit had heard talk, but not too much. Most of the Filipino women worked in the hospitals in bigger cities and came into town to attend Mass in a place where they might find someone who spoke their language, and so the gossip she heard was second-hand at best. But this kind of talk had a way of making its way to every ear, and when she spoke with her husband at night, when the house was clean and the tobacco smell still lingered in his neck, she asked, “So. A strike?”

Gil stayed silent. His chest paused its rise and fall before he let out a sigh of a word: “Yes.”

Marikit nodded, and rested her head on his shoulder, draped a leg over his hips as usual. He wrapped an arm around her waist, kissed her head.

“We have enough food for seven weeks. More, if the boys can keep getting their lunches at their farms. And money—”

“You don’t have to tell me now,” Gil whispered, trailing a hand through her hair in a soothing gesture. “I trust you to make it work. And I thank you for it, too.”

“What’s going to happen?” Marikit asked, her words little more than a tiny breath.

Gil sighed again. “I don’t know. Most of the men are like Arnel—bachelors with no one immediately relying on them. I’m not the only one with a family, but since there are so few of us.” His breathing hesitated again, and when he spoke he was, if possible, even quieter. “I’ve been told that I don’t need to be there. That they would have enough men if the ones with dependents stayed on the field.”

Marikit nodded, and said, “But you can’t do that.”

“It would feel wrong to stay and not be surrounded by them.” Gil pressed his lips to Marikit’s forehead. He spoke into the dark cloud of her hair. “It would feel like abandoning them. And I can’t do that.”

“Of course.” Marikit tipped her face to his and kissed him. “That’s why I married you.”

“You know, there are times I don’t know why you did,” Gil murmured.

Marikit shrugged and kissed him again. “You always give me a new reason.”

#

Sometimes, when Marikit went out to sweep the doorstep, she would see Arnel with the family guitar. Most of the time his fingers were a river, never quite playing the same thing twice, running undulating melodies driven by a strident thrum of a few chords, and sometimes she would see him with some papers on his knee. He was plucking out a melody, his fingers stumbling, when Marikit asked, “What are you doing?”

Arnel didn’t look up when he answered, “Learning a new song.” He played a section, paused, played it again, still hesitating on the final note as his hands learned the shift up the neck.

Marikit peeked over Arnel’s shoulder. “Sheet music?”

Arnel nodded, playing a longer section before flipping the page. “New guy brought it over from Manila.”

Marikit scoffed, then turned to sweep the dust from the porch. “Good song?”

“Haven’t heard it yet,” Arnel murmured, practicing the notes on the new page. “Hearing it now.”

If Marikit prolonged her sweeping to hear the melody in its entirety, she would never admit it. But she watched, fascinated, as Arnel read the notes on the page and transformed them into sound. She eyed the papers that slid to his lap as he practiced the song.

“Okay,” he said, startling Marikit. “I think I got it.”

He played the opening chords, then hummed the lyrics melody over the one he plucked from the guitar. With his back turned, he couldn’t see Marikit stare off into the yard, slowing down her broom strokes to match the music.

It was a languorous song, full of longing and a sway that started in the hips. Marikit pivoted on her feet as she continued sweeping, recalling the dances she learned for the hasty cotillion her parents tired to organize for her eighteenth birthday. The sunlight settled heavy on her skin, made it bead with sweat and run down her face like so many quiet tears. Arnel played a song she had never heard, but felt she knew anyway. Exactly the kind of song they didn’t normally play in the dance halls she stopped going to when she met and married Gil.

When Arnel finished playing, Marikit walked over and sat down next to him, still clutching her broom. “Teach me.”

“What?” Arnel leaned back, his eyebrows raised. “To play guitar?”

Marikit waved her hand. “No, I can do that. Anyone can do that if they just listen. But I want you to teach me how to read.” She snatched the sheet music from his lap and held it in front of his face.

Arnel’s eyes lit up. “How to read music!”

“Yes.” Marikit spread the paper on the porch step then swung her broom around so that her left hand cradled the handle, the broom head rested on her hip. She looked at Arnel and waited.

“Right.” Arnel laughed and shook his head. “Well, first thing’s first, the staff…”

#

Reading music was easy, maybe because the letters didn’t matter except if the music was given entirely as a series of chords. But Marikit could associate the letter A with a certain finger position, the letter G with another one. She wished all words could be composed of just those seven letters of the scales—she could be fluent in all tongues.

At the start of September, Marikit woke up one Sunday to the sound of hammering. She looked out the bedroom window to see her husband and a few men knocking the sides off old wooden crates, then nailing them together to create a series of flats. Her children painted them white, splattering the grass with their hasty strokes. And another man—Arnel, Marikit realized—painted with a smaller brush dipped in bright red.

She dressed, went into the kitchen, and dumped the spent coffee grounds onto the grass outside the kitchen window before making a fresh pot. She poured a small mug for herself, then brought the steel percolator out to the yard. She set it on the porch step, yelling, “Fresh coffee,” over the din before wandering over to Arnel.

A series of signs leaned against the side of the small house. Marikit recognized the letters, but couldn’t fit them yet into a whole word. She sipped and stared at the same phrase repeated across multiple signs. Three A’s, a B, two G’s. A-G. B-A-G. A.

“Recognize anything?” Arnel called to her, painting the curve of a G on a new sign.

“No,” Marikit admitted. She had abandoned any embarrassment about her reading struggles, especially as it became easier and easier for her to sound out the words, to fill in the rest of the letters of the alphabet around the ones she knew from the sheet music. Throughout it, Arnel encouraged her with a waterfall of praise, entwined with admiration of her singing. “Ganda naman,” he said, under his breath as if it were an involuntary gasp. “Again, from the top. If you please.” It made her want to learn more words, to learn more songs, to sing them for him, and for Gil, and around the house as she completed her chores, cooked their meals, counted the stores of food and money to give herself some assurance that her family, and their friends, would be able to weather whatever storm was coming.

The man hummed and finished painting the phrase on the sign in front of him. He gestured to each letter as he read the words aloud. “Isang bagsak.”

Marikit stared at the words, committing their shape to memory, trying not to think about the implications of their meaning. “Isang bagsak,” she repeated.

#

The night before the men planned to walk off the field, Gil took both Arnel and Marikit aside after dinner. “Let Honesto take care of the rest,” he said, jerking his chin at his oldest son. Honesto did the same motion back to his father, then took the dish out of his mother’s hand, yelling for Gregor to help him with drying. Iris came out from her room instead, nudging her older brother with an elbow.

Marikit wiped her hands on her apron and followed her husband to their small yard. The sky was such a deep violet that it looked painted in one eternal, even stroke. Arnel took his lighter and a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, but Gil stayed him with one hand and a glance at Marikit. “Not tonight, Nel. Not right now.”

Arnel nodded, then sat on the porch step, looking up at the both of them. Marikit thought it odd to see him there without the guitar on his thighs, and in such a low light. His face seemed brighter, somehow, more present in the falling darkness than in the honeyed afternoon when they would sit with sheet music and read through it, line by line. And it felt dangerous to see him so, the blackness of his hair fading into the shadows that surrounded him. The rest of him might fade, too, and she might be tempted to follow. She gripped Gil’s hand tight.

Gil raised the hand he held. “Kit,” he whispered.

Marikit turned to him as he placed his lips on her gold wedding band. He left his eyes cast down as he pulled away, and he murmured, “You know that I do my best by you.”

“Of course.”

“And above all else, I put you first?”

She didn’t say anything, but let the silence settle, waiting for him to speak. He glanced up at her before looking over at Arnel, who was sitting with his fingers twitching as if for a cigarette, or for the strings of a guitar.

Arnel met Marikit’s eye and then stilled. Though he was silent, the look in his eye remained steady, almost brazen.

“We don’t know,” Gil said, bringing Marikit’s attention back to him, “if tomorrow will be bad. Or the next day.”

“Bad?” Marikit asked.

Gil looked over at Arnel again before he turned to Marikit. “If anything should happen to me—”

“Nothing will happen to you,” Marikit whispered, almost savagely. Her heart leapt to her throat, turning her breaths ragged. “Promise me, Gil.”

“Kit—”

She turned to Arnel. “You promise me, then,” she demanded in another harsh whisper.

They met eyes again, and this time she held his gaze no matter what entreaties Gil made under his breath to look at me, please, Kit. She stared at this other man and knew that he wouldn’t deny her anything, that he felt something for her that was like Gil’s love, but still nascent. If it had half a chance then it could have grown into something that may have equaled the love she had for her husband, and that he had for her.

But Gil was there, pressing kisses to her knuckles, sharing intimacies like they were something precious they had in abundance. Marikit’s heartbeat thrummed in her ears, and she demanded yet again, “Promise me, Arnel.”

The other man didn’t look away. “I promise, Marikit.” He glanced at Gil before returning his gaze to her. “Whatever might happen to him would happen to me, first. Isang bagsak. One fall, right?”

Marikit nodded. Squeezing her husband’s hand so hard it was like she was trying to imprint the shape of his skeleton into her palms, fossilizing him in her own, softer, still rough and callused hand. “Isang bagsak,” she said.

THE END

Author Bio: Caroliena Cabada's writing has been published in JMWW, Whale Road Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. Her first book of poetry, “True Stories,” is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2024.

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